When my mother died, nothing happened.

I thought that to honor her death, the earth should stop for a second or two.

Everything continued as if nothing as monumental as death occurred.

Perhaps that is why we have funerals,

but even there everyone cries, snickers, yawns, feigns grief, fantasizes about inheritances.

I realized as she was lowered into the ground, that if every death was accompanied by a second

of catatonia, there would be no time for living.